A tasty reward awaits those who are up to the challenge of snipe hunting.
At cursory glance, which is all most people would take if they bothered to look at all, the reach of winter-browned coastal prairie appeared a mostly monotonous sweep of emptiness.
Maybe they’d notice the thin layer of water glimmering in the anklehigh carpet of grasses or the yards of mud rimming a slash of inches-deep openwater pooled in natural depression in the otherwise seemingly featureless flatland. But probably not.
It’s certain not one in a thousand or maybe 100,000 gazing at the “pasture” on a chilly, windy February morning would see the seemingly vacant, lifeless landscape as an animated freshwater wetland rich in wild potential.
But Martin Bethke and I did.
“Looks perfect for snipe,” Bethke said as we shrugged into hunting vests and unsheathed shotguns held in the rack onthe front of the ATV that had transported us into the middle of a sprawling prairie/marsh wetland complex in Matagorda County.
It was, and much more. The morning of snipe hunting proved, as it always does, the multi-face ted richness of experience and insights enjoyed by the handful of wingshooters who pursue what is one of themost cryptic, challenging, delicious and almost wholly ignored migratory gamebirds.
That snipe hunting occurs on shallow freshwater wetlands—some of themost vibrant, varied, rich wildlife habitat in the world— is part of that. But the bird itself is simply fascinating. Wilson’s, to be precise
Snipe— officially, Wilson’s snipe— are one of themost abundant of the scores of species of shorebirds found in North America. Most recent population estimates indicate the continental population of Wilson’s snipe is around 2 million, anumber that has held steady for at least the past 40years. Snipe and wood cock, their forest-dwelling cousins, are the only two shorebirds designated as game birds.
Members of the same family of birds that includes sand pipers and phalaropes, quarter-pound snipe are built for a life tied to shallow wetlands, where they use their long bills (half as long as their body and flexible at the tip) to probe soft, moist soil for worms, insect larvae, snails and other invertebrates.
They also are built for speed, a point made manifest soon after Bethke and I walked onto the prairie, spread about 30 yards apart, and began slowly walking across the squishy expanse.
The first snipe rocketed — there is no other way to describe the flush of a snipe — from seemingly vacant ground about 15 yards ahead. Within a heartbeat, the bird was at 30yards, flying in the twisting, turning, completely unpredictable way all snipe fly when flushed. Caught with feet crossed and firmly planted in about 3 inches of mud, I somehow mounted the shotgun, found the bird, gauged its speed and direction, swung ahead and fired… just as the bird made a 90-degree turn. I missed by at least 6 feet. Snipe, with their erratic, unpredictable flight when flushed and a top speed said to be 60mph, are one of wingshooting’s toughest targets. Only wood cock are anywhere close.
“The federal wildfowl regulations say the daily limit is eight, and considering the kind of terrain snipe often occupy, that limit is somewhat like setting the daily limit on gold nuggets at 42 pounds,” Tom Kelly wrote in a 1995 Field and Streames say built around the vagaries of snipe and snipe hunting.
He added: “Snipe live in marshes… whose bottoms are a trifle too thick to swim through and a trifle too thin to walk on.” React, don’t think
Kelly, who most readers of outdoors-focused literature rightly associate with unmatched insights into turkey hunting and turkey hunters, can be excused his hyperbole. When held against turkey hunting, which involves mild spring days spent in greening forest, sitting as close to motionless as possible, calling a bird into shotgun range, then taking a shot at a nearly motionless target, walking up snipe in a mucky wet land on a raw winter day can seem wholly foreign, a whole lot of work, andmaybe an exercise in madness.
Snipe hunting can be a bit of the first two, but it’s none of the latter.
It is possible to collect a daily limit of eight snipe, but it takes good shooting and not a little luck. Walking upsnipe— and that’s the only way to hunt the birds, as they will almost never hold for a pointing dog— canbe a frustrating exercise when the birds flush “wild,” spooking at 40or 50 yards, making for impossibly long shots. But on days when the birds hold tight — often windy days are best — wingshooters who “snapshoot” rising snipe, letting their instincts and muscle memory guide them, can be surprised at their success.
“Think long, think wrong,” Bethke said after he smoothly dropped a screw-balling snipe with a load of low-brass 8s fired from his quick-handling, side-by-side 12 gauge. Good advice for snipe shooting.
We hunted several patches of prime snipe habitat scattered onthe property leased by the private Thunderbird Hunting Club. All were high-quality freshwater wetlands, something snipe demand. But not all held the birds. Andthat ephemeral nature of snipe— they will cover a spot one day and be gone the next— is one of the qualities that make the birds sucha challenge to hunt.
But even the wetlands that held only scattered snipe were joys to tramp and alive with wildlife. The openwater held sheets of ducks— pintails and swarms of green-winged andblue-winged teal. Mudflats and patches of flooded prairie were alive with dozens of species of shorebirds— sandpipers, dowitchers, black-necked stilts, plovers. All staging and fueling up for their spring migration to nesting ground as far away as the Arctic.
We watched a small group of Ross’s geese “gravelling” ona ranch road way andf locks of white-fronted geese greedily grubbing freshly sprouted greenery in a fallow field.
Overhead, raptors — from tiny kestrels to huge bald eagles, and including caracaras, harriers, redtails and what well may have been a peregrine falcon — sailed as fellow hunters.
Ona ridge of what passes for highground, we watched and listened to a covey of maybe 20 bobwhite quail as the pear-shaped up land birds scratched and pecked for seeds, insects and tender greenery, all the while maintaining a sharp eye for soaring hawks and scurrying to the thorny protection of a cluster of winter-bare mesquite when warranted.
A brilliant vermilion fly catcher perched in ona bare hackberry limb, diving to the ground to grab a beetle or other bug, then flitting backto its perch to enjoy the breakfast before repeating the process over andover. Watching the flame-color flycatcher made it easy to see why it’s called “brasita de fuego”— little ember of fire.
The snipe were icing on the cake. Andwe enjoyed that icing, coming within a bird apiece of our eightsnipe daily limit. Good eating, too
Snipe hunting’s rewards don’t end with the hunt. There’s the eating, too. It’s somehow fitting that the scientific name for Wilson’s snipe is “Gallinago delicata.” The birds are delectable, incredibly rich with a taste and tang of the wetlands to which they are tied. Grilled, smoked or smothered, they are a treat.
With so much to offer, it is surprising that so few wing shooters pursue snipe. Texas has a 107-day hunting season for snipe, the maximum allowed under federal law, andthe eight-bird limit is liberal. The birds are found across most of the state, always associated with open lands holding no more than a couple of inches of ground cover and plenty of soft, wet, forage-rich soil.
But only about 5,000of the state’s half-million or so wing shooters hunt snipe each season— a season that happens to close Sunday.
The rest don’t know what they’re missing.